Welcome to the following new World Class New Zealanders

We are pleased to welcome the following exceptional New Zealanders to the World Class New Zealand Network:

Lara Bowen, London, UK

Since the mid 1990's, Lara Bowen has been leading multidisciplinary teams to deliver digital ideas for brands. She has been instrumental in achieving short and long-term business objectives for clients while working in a variety of pivotal positions at global creative agencies. Passionate about working at the forefront of technical change, Lara strives to map its potential to human interaction and connectedness. She also has a passion for driving change, building teams, and delivering business results.

In her current role, Lara works alongside world-class thinkers within the Ogilvy Group, to lead the RedWorks digital production team and evolve the content offering. She thrives in a fast paced, leading edge culture where she is contributing to strategy, business effectiveness, and creative excellence.

Bart Campbell,Melbourne, Australia

From 2009 until June 2013, Bart Campbell was the Group COO of Chime Communications plc (“Chime’s”) sports division, called CSM Sport & Entertainment which has 670+ staff, in 15 offices across 13 countries. During that period, he was a member of the executive board of Chime.

Prior to that, Bart was the Group CEO of the sports marketing and management business, Essentially Group plc (“Essentially”) which is part of Chime today. During his tenure as CEO of Essentially, he led the IPO of the business and grew it from 20 to 120 professionals with offices in London, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, India and Japan.

Since June 2013, Bart has been a shareholder and Chairman of the Melbourne Storm, a premiership National Rugby League team in Australia.

Michael Cooper, London, UK

Michael Cooper is a business technologist with considerable experience in the capital markets and a background in finance industry networking. He combines a particular interest in the evolution of the capital markets with the exploitation and integration of technology in capital markets business.

Currently employed as CTO for BT Radianz, Michael is primarily responsible for technology strategy and the evolution of BT’s financial markets electronic trading platform architectures, and the maintenance of key platform attributes including security posture, infrastructure resilience and reliability, performance and operability.

Andrew Cox,Melbourne, Australia

Andrew Cox has over 25 years' business management experience in organisational change, corporate finance and marketing. Prior to establishing the Imperium Capital Group with his wife Sarah, Andrew was a Director of KPMG Corporate Finance where he specialised in International Mergers and Acquisitions. His clients included Telstra Corporation Limited, Fosters Group Limited, Tabcorp Limited and Coles Myer Limited. In addition, Andrew has held senior executive finance positions with Coles Myer Limited, J Boag and Son Limited where he was General Manager Finance and Corporate Affairs, and with HSBC Plc where he was Corporate Banking Manager in Christchurch New Zealand.

Imperium Capital Group is a diversified privately owned investment group with businesses operating in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Asia and the Americas across Import Distribution, Signage, Home Improvement Solutions, Equities Trading, Luxury Accommodation Hospitality and Professional Sports.

Prior to starting SideStory, he was Advisor to ustwo.com, Corporate Development Director/SVP for Virgin Group, Head of Corporate Development at Virgin Atlantic, Strategy Director for TACA Airlines (now Avianca) in El Salvador, and strategy consultant with Bain & Company in Sydney, Rome and Milan.

Giovanni now serves as Non-Executive Director for ustwo, one of the largest independent digital agencies working with Google, Facebook, Sky, Ford, Adidas & Deepmind; and Wayfindr a social enterprise on a mission empower vision impaired people to navigate the world independently.

Phil Goffin, London, UK

Phil Goffin is one of the UK’s leading FinTech innovators. With companies he has founded ranking in the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 and The Top Fintech 50 Best Innovation Companies in 2014, 2015 and 2016, he is a specialist in Innovation by Design with extensive experience as an investor, adviser and entrepreneur. Over the past 18 years, Phil has designed, initiated, founded and supported key disruptive financial services technology companies that collectively generate over NZD $500 million in annual revenues, employing over 1000 great people, routing over 200 million message transactions across 30+ countries, clearing $50bn transactions per month, and supporting over $500bn in assets under management digitally.

He co-founded Time Machine Capital, an AI and Fintech incubator, and is Director of Innovation for IFDS, the UK’s largest fund administrator running an innovation team in London focused on developing new savings and investment propositions for Asset Managers. He lives in London with his wife and 2 young boys.

Lesley Grant, Sydney, Australia

Lesley Grant has extensive experience in the aviation industry and is currently the CEO of Qantas Loyalty where she drives the evolution and growth of one of the world’s leading loyalty businesses.

Appointed to the business in 2012, Lesley was the architect of the new structure and the creation of Qantas Loyalty, the next evolution of what was then the Qantas Frequent Flyer business. This step represented the shift in the business to be better able to serve the business stakeholders and customers.

Victoria Macdonald, London, UK

Victoria Macdonald is an award-winning journalist, who has been covering health and social care issues for Channel 4 News since 1999. She closely follows the changes and developments in the NHS and the care system from the scandal at Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust to the wholesale reforms of the health service. Victoria also reports on medical developments and mental health issues as well as covering stories on how welfare reforms are affecting those with physical disabilities. In addition, she closely watches developments in HIV/Aids and TB. She is a Trustee for MDAC - the international human rights organisation that uses the law to secure equality, inclusion and justice for people with mental disabilities worldwide.

Amy Mills, Sydney, Australia

Amy Mills is the Head of Core and Emerging Australia and New Zealand for LinkedIn. She is a senior authentic digital leader with broad experience across strategy, digital marketing, mobile, cross media selling, data, analytics, social and sales management. Her previous roles include Senior Sales Executive at Twitter and Group Sales Manager at Yahoo.

Helen Robinson, Auckland, New Zealand

Helen Robinson got her first job at 11, set up her own tech business at 22, and 20 years later was managing director of Microsoft NZ. These days she is a professional director, chair of Network for Learning and Cloud M, and on the boards of ATEED and the Open Polytechnic. In her free time, she is the Co-Founder and Executive Chair of Organic Initiative, a company making biodegradable, organic, fair trade, women’s hygiene products.

Ben Shipley, Sydney, Australia

Ben Shipley is a branding expert with experience across Asia and North America. Based in Sydney, he is the Managing Director of Spectrum Group, which brings together public relations, social media and journalistic content to make an impact for the clients it works with.

Before moving to Australia, Ben lived and worked in Shanghai for 5 years. He built an agency and a reputation launching 42 Below vodka in China and many other Asian markets.

Debbie Schubert, Sydney, Australia

Debbie is recognized in the Australian Market as a leader and expert in Marketing and Sales at Retail. Her experience covers the Pharmaceutical, FMCG and Fashion Utility arena. Her strengths are unlocking category growth, creating joint value creation for all stakeholders and building strategic partnerships with suppliers and customers across Pharmacy and Fast Moving Consumer goods clients.

In her role as a consultant, Debbie builds on her experience, working along side senior leadership teams creating Market Strategies, working with their teams on Business Development, go to market sales solutions and back end logistics. Her experience comes from extensive leadership roles in blue chip companies such as PepsiCo, Nestle, Snackbrands, and S.C.Johnson. In these companies Debbie also worked on Global teams particularly in solutions for Asia Pacific.

Debbie has won a number of Awards for her work including 26 POPAI awards including innovation of the year. Additional to this Debbie has won two global awards in the Marketing at Retail forum in North America. Debbie was Chairman of the board for POPAI 2011 – 2013. In September 2013, Debbie was made a life member and in 2015 was put in the Hall of Fame POPAI Alumni. Debbie has an extensive network of contacts and influence in the FMCG and the Shopper Marketing Industry.

Michele Teague, Melbourne, Australia

Michele Teague is an experienced senior executive who has worked for large corporates (many publicly listed) and for companies employing 30,000+ people with revenues of $14+ billion. Her key roles have been at General Manager Marketing/Global Marketing level, and commercial Managing Director/GM level, with P&L accountability for $100m+ revenue.

A member of senior executive teams (including roles requiring presentations and contributions to Boards and their strategies) has given Michele a strong appreciation of the business and financial operations of companies including the drivers of revenue and profit. In addition, she has governance/board experience on industry bodies (marketing and advertising) and as a non-executive director for New Zealand Rugby League during a time of strategic and leadership change.